Learning Together: A History of Coeducation in American Public Schools

by David Tyack, Elizabeth Hansot

Now available in paperback, this award-winning book provides a comprehensive history of gender policies and practices in American public schools. David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot explore the many factors that have shaped coeducation since its origins. At the very time that Americans were creating separate spheres for adult men and women, they institutionalized an education system that brought boys and girls together. How did beliefs about the similarities and differences of boys and girls shape policy and practice in schools? To what degree did the treatment of boys and girls differ by class, race, region, and historical period? Debates over gender policies suggest that American have made public education the repository of their hopes and anxieties about relationships between the sexes. Thus, the history of coeducation serves as a window not only on constancy and change in gender practices in the schools but also on cultural conflicts about gender in the broader society.

"Learning Together presents a rich and exhaustive search through [the] 'tangled history' of gender and education that links both the silences and the debates surrounding coeducation to the changing roles of women and men in our society....It is the generosity and capaciousness of Tyack and Hansot's scholarship that makes Learning Together so important a book." —Science

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, History

381 pages, Paperback

First published October 24, 1990

Reviews

[☆ Mira ✷ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this as part of my research for an essay on the history of girls' rights in American education. It was an interesting read and a pleasure to highlight!

[Dani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting topic--it's cool to examine something we largely take for granted in the US. Their argument is that coeducation was generally not a problem, and that those opposed did not make many strong changes or valid points.